Etat Libre d'Orange
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The elemi resin hits like industrial solvent—sharp, green-citric, almost painfully bright—whilst the black pepper provides a rolling, sneeze-inducing heat that makes your nostrils flare. It's confrontational, this opening, with none of the smooth cedar you might expect; instead, everything feels raw and unfinished, like freshly planed wood and crushed peppercorns scattered across a workshop floor.
The vetiver emerges properly now, all rootsy greenness and smoky undertones, weaving through that cedarwood which has turned drier and more pronounced. The myrrh begins its slow ascent, bringing an almost medicinal balsamic quality that shouldn't work with the pepper but somehow does, whilst the opoponax adds a darker, slightly animalic sweetness that grounds the composition's more volatile elements.
What remains is a resinous skin scent where vanilla finally makes its presence felt—not as sweetness, but as a soft, ambery glow that tempers the myrrh's austere, church-like quality. The vetiver persists as a smoky ghost, whilst traces of pepper occasionally resurface when you warm the skin, creating an intimate fug that's more comforting than the opening suggested possible.
Fat Electrician is a study in contradictions—a fragrance that crackles with black pepper and vetiver's green bite whilst simultaneously enveloping you in plush, resinous warmth. Antoine Maisondieu has crafted something deliberately unsettling here: the elemi resin arrives with a sharp, almost turpentine-like citric edge that collides head-on with Orpur-grade black pepper, creating an opening that feels like sniffing a timber yard whilst someone grinds peppercorns nearby. This isn't polite spice; it's agitated, electric, properly alive.
The vetiver heart doesn't play the earthy gentleman—instead, it's all rootsy greenness and smoky undertones, bolstered by cedarwood that brings a certain dryness rather than sweetness. What makes this fascinating is how the myrrh and opoponax bubble up from beneath, their almost medicinal, balsamic character creating an oddly comforting fug against all that spiky brightness. The vanilla absolute never reads as gourmand; Maisondieu's used it as a fixative and softener, a golden thread that prevents the composition from becoming aggressively austere.
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3.9/5 (94)